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The Ceo's Job Is Always About Leadership. It's About Leadership In A Vision, In Terms Of Where You're Going, It's About Making Sure That You Have The Right Organization And Staff, And That You Have Kind Of Clearly Communicated What Some Of The Plays Are And What Some Of The Goals Are In Terms Of The Business And How Do You Organize Together In Order To Make That Happen.

-Reid Hoffman

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The Ceo's Job Is

Reid Hoffman

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The Ceo's Job Is Always About Leadership. It's About Leadership In A Vision, In Terms Of Where You're Going, It's About Making Sure That You Have The Right Organization And Staff, And That You Have Kind Of Clearly Communicated What Some Of The Plays Are And What Some Of The Goals Are In Terms Of The Business And How Do You Organize Together In Order To Make That Happen.

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When You Think About Being Contrarian, You Have To Think About - how Is It That Smart People Will Disagree With Me, Disagree With Me ...from A Position Of Intelligence, And There Is Something That I Know That They Don't Know, That Will Actually In Fact Play Out To Be True.

Trust And Mutual Value Creation Helps Both Employer And Employee Compete In The Marketplace.

The Actual, The Forming Of Ties With A Group Of People Around You Where They Help You Grow As A Professional, Solve Problems, Get Opportunities, And You Help Them, Is Actually The Constitutive Base Of The Foundation Of A Strong, Modern Career.

There's A Lot Of People In The World That Would Love To Trade Places With American Citizens, And We Are Very Fortunate To Be Here.

People Generally Worry About Social Networking More Than They Need To. In Kind Of Consumer Internet Investing And On Social And Professional Networks, I Kind Of Look At Time Spending And Time Efficiency. You Know, Time Saving Sites. So On Time Spending Sites, Things Where You Play Lots Of Games Or That Sort Of Thing, You Might Worry About A Productivity Loss If People Are Spending A Lot Of Time Doing That. So If There's A Lot Of Kind Of Addictive Gaming Going On During Work Hours, That Won't Be As Helpful To You.

You Gotta Be Both Flexible And Persistent.

...silicon Valley's Success Comes From The Way Its Companies Build Alliances With Their Employees.

Part Of The Reason We Like Democracy Is It's The Portfolio Of Decades, Which Is To Say You Don't Also Get The Disastrous Dictator Who Completely Destroys A Society, Engages You In Wars And So Forth.

When You Have An Idea, A Classic Entrepreneurial Impulse Is To Hold The Idea Close To You And Not Tell People And That's Almost Always A Mistake.

We've Been Working For Years On How We Can Use Technology To Help People Make Their Own Jobs, Become Entrepreneurs, Create Their Own Small Businesses. Those Are The Kinds Of Things That I And A Bunch Of Other People At Linkedin Actually Work On.

Part Of What Being A Great Founder Is, Is Being Both Able To Hold The Belief, To Think About Where It Is You Want To Be Doing And Want To Be Going, But Also Be Smart Enough That You Are Essentially Listening To Criticism, Negative Feedback, Competitive Entries.

One Of The Challenges In Networking Is Everybody Thinks It's Making Cold Calls To Strangers. Actually, It's The People Who Already Have Strong Trust Relationships With You, Who Know You're Dedicated, Smart, A Team Player, Who Can Help You.

People Who Take Risk Intelligently Can Usually Actually Make A Lot More Progress Than People Who Don't.

I Actually Think Every Individual Is Now An Entrepreneur, Whether They Recognize It Or Not.

There Are Two Reasons [ Business People Are Not Publicly Anti-donald Trump ], One Is Well-intentioned, Which Is The Classic Kind Of American Notion. We Want To Be Inclusive, We Want To Have Our Shareholders, Our Employees, Our Customers, Whether They Are Democrat, Republican, Green Or Libertarian, To Feel Comfortable With How We're Doing Business. And So That Tends To Be Apolitical. People Say, "no, No, I Just Simply Shouldn't Get Involved In Politics."

I Think Most Of [people] Are Not Very Well Educated Themselves To Understand The Winston Churchill Line - Democracy Is The Worst Of All Governments Until You Consider All The Other Ones.

Because In Our Boom Times, Everything Is Growing, Usually, You Know, The Kind Of Things That Come To Mind Are Wild, Wild, West, Or Land Grabs, You Know, These Sorts Of Things, In Order To Make Something, You Know, Kind Of To Grow Into The Future And To Get All The Growth That You Need To Have. So You Tend To Hire A Lot Because You're Running Fast To The Future.

I Think I Knew How Frightened People Were [when Donald Trump Was Elected], And I Think I Knew That People Were Worried About Their Future. I Don't Think I Realized That They Would Be Willing To Risk Kind Of A 1920s Germany In Order To Blow It All Up, Not Realizing That We've Accomplished A Lot As Americans, And We Want To Keep The Good Things And Revolutionize The New Things.

The Key Thing For A Ceo To Keep Their Head In The Game Is Recognize That There's Turbulent Times, Plan For, You Know, Bad Luck As Well As Good Luck, Keep People Focused On What The Key, You Know, Business Wins Are, And You Know, Provide The Energy That People Always Need In Order To, You Know, To Go Into Battle Because, You Know, Work Is Hard And Go Into Work And Do That Well. And Provide A Good Leadership Beacon For That. In Other Words, It's The Same Thing That Makes Good Leadership In Any Other Time.

One Of The Phrases I Frequently Look For Is Infinite Learning Curve.because Each Entrepreneurial Pattern Is To Some Degree Unique And New.

I Get Energy From One-on-one Conversations Most Often, And I Lose Energy From Group Conversations Most Often.

Innovation Comes From Long-term Thinking And Iterative Execution.

It's Very Conventional To Say That You're A Contrarian These Days.

By 2030 Over 2 Billion Jobs Will Disappear.

Silicon Valley Tends To Believe In The Individual Who Creates A Small Group And Does Something Big. Democracy Is Always Frustrating, But It Creates A Society That, For Example, Allows Us To Invest In Each Other's Kids, To Have Public Education, To Have Both A Greater Society And Individual Freedom For Creating Businesses.

Benevolent, Enlightened, Wise Dictators Are The Most Efficient Form Of Government. The Problem Is What Comes Afterwards.

If You Can Get Better At Your Job, You Should Be An Active Member Of Linkedin, Because Linkedin Should Be Connecting You To The Information, Insights And People To Be More Effective.

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If I Ever Hear A Founder Talk About Oh This Is How I Have A Balanced Life So On And So Forth - they're Not Committed To Winning.

Finished Ought To Be An F-word For All Of Us. We Are All Works In Progress. Each Day Presents An Opportunity To Learn More, Do More, Be More, Grow More In Our Lives And Careers.

When Thinking About How To Deploy Kind Of Professional And Social Networking Into Your Business, It's Really Not A Question Of If, It's A Question Of When. And The Reason Is, Just Think About The Fact That Those Businesses That Adopt New Technologies To Operate Efficiently And Use Them To Get A Competitive Edge Are The Businesses That In Fact, You Know, It Becomes One More Competitive Advantage. Whether It's A Fax Machine Or A Mobile Phone Or A New Way Of Doing Financing Or Any Of These Things, You Know, These Are Key Things To Do.

A Little-known Company With A Realistic Framework That Appeals To Entrepreneurial Employees Is Going To Be More Attractive Than A Famous Company That Treats Its People Like Disposable Assets.

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During Normal Times Or Boom Times, There Are Some Parts Of The Business That Are Going To So Well, That That Can Cover For Weakness And Other Parts Of The Business. What Happens During Recessions, Is You Have Less Windfalls Just Helping You Cover Mistakes. You Have To Be More Careful About Not Making Mistakes.

The Other Reason Why People Don't Take A Stand, Which Is Very True In This Election, Is Looking At [donald] Trump And Fearing Reprisal, Fearing Reprisal From Someone Who Is Seeking The Highest, Most Powerful Role In The Land, Who Has Had A History Of Doing Everything From Attacks, Threats And Lawsuits And Who Has A Complete Kind Of Vengeful, Narcissistic Behavior, Which Makes People Legitimately Worried, Almost Like A Schoolyard Bully, That If I Step Up, Am I Going To Be Targeted, Too?

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Before Dreaming About The Future Or Marking Plans, You Need To Articulate What You Already Have Going For You - As Entrepreneurs Do.

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Pay Attention To Your Culture And Your Hires From The Very Beginning.

Companies Hire A Lot During Boom Times Because They're Trying To Adequately Accelerate Into The Future.

When You’re Doing Work You Care About, You Are Able To Work Harder And Better.

Ironically, In A Changing World, Playing It Safe Is One Of The Riskiest Things You Can Do.

Playing It Safe

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Donald Trump Has Shown That He Will Essentially Attack Individuals, Make Second Amendment Jokes.

Second Amendment

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One Of The Things Is When You Think, "wait, I'm Fearful Of Retaliation, I'm Fearful Of Oppression Because Of Someone Who Is Going Into A Public Office, Who Might Be Vengeful For Their Own Personal Reasons, That's Actually Not A Reason To Hide - That's A Reason To Step Up, Right?"this Is Part Of What We Learned From The 1920s.

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So Usually You Have To Have Product Distribution As More Fundamental Than What The Actual Product Is.

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We Believe That When The Right Talent Meets The Right Opportunity In A Company With The Right Philosophy, Amazing Transformation Can Happen.

If You Don't Start Out Aiming For The Big Game, You Almost Never Can Get There.

There Are Opportunities That You Get During Crises Times. Crises Times Are A Great Time To Start A Business.

What Great Founders Do Is Seek The Networks That Will Be Essential To Their Task... Usually It's Best To Have Two Or Three People On A Team Rather Than A Solo Founder.

One Of The Tests That I Frequently Use In An Interaction Is I Push On The Idea And What I'm Looking For Is Both Flexibility & Persistence.

Now, In Economic Crises Times, The Kind Of Things You're Looking At Is It's Generally Harder To Get Capital, Revenue Growth May Be More, Revenue Lines May Be Unstable Or Growth May Be Less Easy To Predict That You're Going To Get To. And So What You Do Is You Take A Certain Conservative Approach Of When, As All Entrepreneurs Should Do, You Plan For Both Good Luck And Bad Luck, You Put Extra Time On, "okay, If I Have Bad Luck, What Do I Do About That?"

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The Challenge When You Think About Product Distribution Is: How Are You Competing For Potential Customers Or Potential Members Time?

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I Think The Right Way To Do This Is Just To Step Up And Do It, So I Actually Think We'll See More Of That Over The Next Coming Weeks, Because I Think They'll Say, "we'd Like To Be Good For Business And Quiet On Politics, But This Is Too Urgent, It Is Too Much Of A Key Crisis In Who We Are Going To Become As Americans. We Can Risk Too Much, And So We Have To Step Forward." And I Think You Will See More And More People Stepping Forward, Like Howard Schultz, Steve Case And Other Folks, In Order To Try To Make A Difference In This [donald Trump] Election.

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You Jump Off A Cliff And You Assemble An Airplane On The Way Down.

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The Value Of Being Connected And Transparent Is So High That The Roadbumps Of Privacy Issues Are Much Lower In Actual Experience Than People's Fears.

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Data Only Exists Within The Framework Of A Vision You're Building To, A Hypothesis Of Where You're Moving To.

The Ceo's Job Is Always About Leadership. It's About Leadership In A Vision, In Terms Of Where You're Going, It's About Making Sure That You Have The Right Organization And Staff, And That You Have Kind Of Clearly Communicated What Some Of The Plays Are And What Some Of The Goals Are In Terms Of The Business And How Do You Organize Together In Order To Make That Happen.

You Have To Be Constantly Reinventing Yourself And Investing In The Future.

Reinventing Yourself

Investing In The Future

The Future Is Sooner And Stranger Than You Think.

The Fastest Way To Change Yourself Is To Hang Out With People Who Are Already The Way You Want To Be.

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A Product Needs To Be Sufficiently Innovative To Distinguish Itself From The Pack, But Not So Forward Thinking As To Alienate The User.

What I Think Peter Thiel Imagines Is That Donald Trump Has A Policy, That Trump Has An Idea Of What To Do. Haven't Heard Any Of Those Ideas. All I Hear Is Sloganeering, Vitriol, Personal Attacks.

Democracy Is Always Frustrating.

One Of The Ways They Run Forward Is By Viewing The Thing They’re Doing As Something That’s Going To Be The Whole World.

Managing Risk Is A Key Variable, Frankly, All Aspects Of Life, Business Is Just One Of Them, And One Of The Things That Most People Do In Terms Of Managing Risk, That's Actually Bad Thinking, Is They Think They Can Manage Risk To Zero. Everything Has Some Risk To It. You Know, You Drive Your Car Down The Street, A Drunk Driver May Hit You. So What You're Doing Is You're Actually Trying To Get To An Acceptable Level Of Risk.

I Think We Realized The Depth Of Frustration Through The Current Political Process. So We Said, "ok, We Know There's A Serious Problem Here, We Know We Need To Work On It," And Now It's "oh, We Need To Work On It A Lot Faster."

The Entrepreneurial Journey Starts With Jumping Off A Cliff And Assembling An Airplane On The Way Down.

The Metaphor That I Frequently Use For Entrepreneurship Is Jumping Off A Cliff And Assembling An Airplane Plane On The Way Down.

The Thing That Changes Your Professional Life, Your Capabilities, Your Learning, Your Understanding, Your Opportunity Flow, Your Ability To Make Things Happen, Is The Center Relationships You Have With Powerful And Effective People Around You In The Industry, In The Activity That You Want To Be Doing.

At Silicon Valley, I'm Extremely Sympathetic To The Revolutionary Response. I Not Only Agree With It Emotionally. I Agree With It Practically. And The Only Thing I Disagree With Is, I Don't Think Donald Trump Is That. Trump Is Blow It Up For No Good Reason At All. You Want To Actually Do Revolution With A Target, With An Idea, With Building A New System.

Everything In Life Has Some Risk, And What You Have To Actually Learn To Do Is How To Navigate It.

In Crisis Times, It's Actually Not More Difficult To Motivate Your Staff, Because Everyone Gets Much More Focused On How They Control Their Own Economic Destiny. So, What You Do Is You Have Clear Communication, Which Is Always A Good Leadership Technique, And You Talk About How You Can Build Something Good And Strong In The Future, And How You Can Work Together In Order To Do That.

The Question Is: How You Cross Uneven Ground, How You Assemble Networks Around You.

Silicon Valley Tends To Believe In The Individual Who Creates A Small Group And Does Something Big.

Success...is No Longer A Simple Ascension Of Steps. You Need To Climb Sideways And Sometimes Down, And Sometimes You Need To Swing From The Jungle Gym And Establish Your Own Turf Somewhere Else On The Playground.

Economic Tough Times Are Great Times To Be Investing In The Future.

Times Of Economic Crises Can Change What The Competitive Landscape Looks Like, Because When, For Example, You Have Boom Times, Capital Is Easy To Come By, Growth Is Easy, Sometimes What You Focus On Is, You Know, How To Accelerate In The Boom. During Economic Crises, The Question Is, The Companies That Come Out Of, You Know, That Are Sailing Through That With The Best Liquidity, Both Assets On The Balance Sheet, Making Money, Ability To Grow Their Businesses, Get A Disproportionate Competitive Advantage.

[hillary Clinton] Is Part Of The Establishment, And That's Good For Foreign Policy And For Understanding The Ongoing Health Care System.

It's Nice To Be Happy. But The Meaning Of Life Is Meaning - What's The Impact You're Having On The World. Suffering To Accomplish That Is A Perfectly Fine Thing.

World Suffering

We Don't Celebrate Failure In Silicon Valley. We Celebrate Learning

You Remake Yourself As You Grow And As The World Changes. Your Identity Doesn’t Get Found. It Emerges.

The Reality Is: A Founder Is Someone Who Deals With A Ton Of Different Headaches And No One Is Universally Super Powered.

We Have Made A Huge Amount Of Progress Over The Last 50 Years By Enabling Trade, By Enabling Kind Of Collaboration And Learning. And Actually, In Fact, When You Look At Your Average 30-year-old Today, They're Much Better Off Than A 30-year-old 20 Years Ago, 30 Years Ago, Because Of Progress In Technology And Health Care And All The Rest Of This.

Be Persistent, And Hang On To Your Vision. And At The Same Time, Be Flexible.

Social Networks Do Best When They Tap Into One Of The Seven Deadly Sins. Facebook Is Ego. Zynga Is Sloth. Linkedin Is Greed.

This Is Classic When You Begin Thinking About What Is A Great Founder Is, You Navigate What Is Apparent Paradoxes.

I Wish To Be Focused On Kind Of The Business Stuff I'm Doing, How Do I Contribute To Our Economic Progress, How Do I Help Create A Future For American Industry, American Middle Class, These Kind Of Things. Those Things Actually Really Matter To Me.

World-changing Startups Need To Be Premised On Accurate Contrarian Theories.

If You Have To Conduct Layoffs, Which Is Always A Regrettable Thing, There's Kind Of Three Things That Are Very Important. One Is To Communicate Well With Your Employees In Order To Help Them Understand Why It Is You're Doing, And How. Second Is To Make Sure That The Employees Who Are Part Of The Go Forward, Understand Kind Of What Happened And Are Not Like The Ground Doesn't Keep Moving. It's Like, Okay, We Did That, We're Moving Forward, Here We Go. And Then For The Employees That You Unfortunately Have To Let Go, Try To Provide As Much Support For Them As Possible.

Entrepreneurship Is A Life Idea, Not A Strictly Business One; A Global Idea, Not A Strictly American One.

Entrepreneurship

In Software Speed To Market, Speed To Learning Is Really Key. In Hardware If You Screw It Up You Are Dead. So Accuracy Really Matters.

First Mover Advantage Doesn't Go To The Company That Starts Up, It Goes To The Company That Scales Up

Help The People In Your Network. And Let Them Help You.

Social Business

We Understand That Most Of The Middle Class Doesn't Know What To Do, Doesn't Feel Like They Have Economic Progress, And [hillary Clinton] Goes, "ok, I Realize That's My Top Agenda Item. That's The Thing I Need To Do."

I Don't Normally Think Of Like Most Successful Moments, Because Like Most Entrepreneurs, I Tend To Think That However How High Of A Mountain I've Climbed, I'm Always Looking At The Next Mountain To Climb.

I Find That The Interesting Challenges, Because There's Obvious Things Where, You Know, Don't Be Unethical, Don't Be Evil, You Know, Don't Break The Law, Don't Do Immoral Things, Those Are All Straightforward And Don't Create Ethical Dilemmas. The Thing That's Interesting Is When You Actually Have Multiple Interests At Stake And You Have To Kind Of Navigate Your Way Through It.

I'm Sympathetic To The People Who Go, "whoa, We'd Like To Have The Benevolent, Wise Dictator. It Will All Work Much More Efficiently," But The Reason That We Remain Staunch Democrats - With A Small D - Is It's A Decades Long, It's A Centuries Long, It's A Country Long Process For Being Inclusive.

One Of The Really Key Things To Look At In Terms Of Crafting Strategy When You're In An Economic Crises Is How Do You Maximize Essentially Your Liquidity Position? Your Ability To Both Take Kind Of Profits And Revenues And Business And Then Convert That Into A Stronger Lead. And So Those Companies That Can Do That Can Actually, You Know, Get A March On Their Competitors.

Boom And Bust Cycles Are Very Difficult For Businesses Because You're Hiring A Bunch Because You're Planning For The Future. And If The Future Is Going To Be Very Big, You Need To Hire People, Or Suddenly You Go To Boom To Bust, Then All Of A Sudden, You're Kind Of Battening Down The Hatches And Trying To Sail, You Know, Through The Storm, It's A Different Thing. So Part Of It Is Making Good Decisions About, Well, How Long Is A Boom Cycle Going To Be, You Know, Don't Plan On It Going Forever.

You Should Have An Investment Thesis That Essentially Says Why You Think This Is Potentially A Good Idea.

The Key Thing Is To Invest In The Future And What That Means Is When You're Deploying Technology Or You're A Technology Business, Is To Make Sure That You're Keeping On The Innovation Cycle, Where You're Both Creating And Adopting The New Business Practices, And The New Techniques In Order To Drive Your Business The Right Way.

I Think Hillary [clinton] Has [woken Up To The Plight Of The Middle Class] And Is Working Toward It In A Democratic Process.

People Will Be Discovering That The Internet Helps Their Career. One Of My Theses Is That Every Individual Is Now A Small Business; How You Manage Your Own Personal Career Is The Exact Way You Manage A Small Business. Your Brand Matters. That Is How Linkedin Operates.

There's An Ability To Learn & Adapt, An Ability To Constantly Have A Vision That's Driving You, But To Be Taking Input From All Sources.

Make Sure A Certain Percentage Of The People That You're Hiring Are Generalists So That You Can Be, Kind Of Reconfigured In The Workforce Pretty Easily.

Probably The Biggest Mistake That I Made Personally Is I Knew Early On That I Wanted To Go Into Start-ups And Creating Kind Of Software That Could Help Change The Lives Of Millions Of People. And Basically What I Did Is I Kind Of Went, Okay, Well, I Need A Set Of Titles And I Need A Checklist Of Skills, And I Ran Through All That, And That Wasn't A Useless Thing, But What I Didn't Realize, And, You Know, And No One Gave Me The Right Advice For Doing This, Is That Actually Your Network, In Essentially, Is Your Career.

Part Of The Entrepreneurial Thing Is There Are Lots Of Ways To Die.

Entrepreneurial

The Key Issue When You're Looking At Cost Cutting Is To Always Plan For The Future.

I Think The Boarding Schools Are Like Miniature Versions Of "lord Of The Flies."

People Are Legitimately Worried About Donald Trump, Almost Like A Schoolyard Bully, If I Step Up, Am I Going To Be Targeted, Too?

Good Ideas Need Good Strategy To Realize Their Potential.

The Underpinnings Of The Alliance: The Company Helps The Employee Transform His Career; The Employee Helps The Company Transform.

I Am Most Heartened When I'm Talking To A Team When They're Reasoning To Each Other.

It’s Actually Pretty Easy To Be Contrarian. It’s Hard To Be Contrarian And Right.

What Is An Entrepreneur? Someone Who Jumps Off A Cliff And Builds A Plane On The Way Down.

Most Of The Ethical Dilemmas That I Have Faced Have All Been In The Category Of, You Know, I Know Something And What's My Obligation To Disclose It. So, For Example, You See People Make A Mistake In The Contract That You're Making Between The Businesses And Do You Disclose It Or Do You Reveal It? And Generally Speaking, The Way That I Solve These Is I Kind Of Go Through A List Of, You Know, What's The Most, What Are The Obligations And Constituencies And In What Order?

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